27th Mar 2014 15:12
LONDON (Alliance News) - Gulf Keystone Petroleum Ltd Thursday said its pretax loss narrowed in its full-year 2013 as commercial production began at Shaikan during the period.
The oil and gas exploration and development company said its pretax loss narrowed to USD32.0 million from USD80.2 million the previous year despite a fall in revenues to USD6.7 million from USD32.2 million in 2012.
However, the company noted that all of its oil revenues in 2012 came from test production, meaning that the same amount of cash was taken from the company as exploration costs.
The company said its cost of sales fell 63% to USD12.0 million from USD32.2 million the previous year and its general and administrative expenses fell 81% to USD15.8 million from USD82.1 million in 2012 as the company.
Commencement of commercial oil production from the company's Shaikan facility in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq started in 2013 and it recently increased production at the first of two facilities to 16,000 barrels of oil per day, with an aim to reach 20,000 barrels per day in the near term, with production from its second production facility also coming online this year.
The company said gross production for the year totalled 496,921 barrels of oil compared from 832,859 barrels of oil from Shaikan.
Gulf Keystone said that it expects its Shaikan production capacity to increase to 40,000 barrels of oil per day by the end of the fourth quarter 2014 and to 66,000 barrels of oil per day by the first quarter 2016, before progressing to its medium term target of 100,000 barrels of oil per day.
The news comes days after the company moved to London's main market from AIM, where Gulf Keystone was the sixth-biggest stock by market capitalisation before its move.
Gulf Keystone could go into the FTSE 250 at the next index review, based on its current market capitalisation.
Gulf Keystone shares were up 2.5% to 103.75 pence Thursday.
By Tom McIvor; [email protected]; @TomMcIvor1
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